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Monthly Archives: June 2009

Last Saturday, I turned 27. Saturday also happened to be the 27th day of June. So, it was my Golden Birthday. Because it’s the day of my birthday, 27 has always felt like a lucky number to me.

I celebrated big time at a Cowboyz and Indianz Luau thrown in my honor along with a fellow June 27th birthday person as well as a housewarming party and many other things to celebrate. A good time was had by all but the party isn’t what this post is about.

It’s about getting older and looking ahead.

It’s not that I feel necessarily any older. There was a time when I complained that I always felt older than I was numerically. These days, I guess it feels about right. If anything, I feel a bit younger than I am numerically, at least in terms of expected social accomplishments and such. I have friends who are married and having children and working ‘career’ jobs. I’m not doing any of those things. And that’s okay. I don’t feel as if I’m missing out by not being married or having kids–certainly not right now, anyway. The lack of ‘career’ is something else all together even if at one point I thought coffee might be a viable choice for me.

But, these things change and now I’m looking to do something other than coffee. Problem is, though, I don’t know what. I have a vague notion that I’d like to ‘help people’ or ‘help the planet’ or ‘do something meaningful’. But I have no real concrete understanding of what I mean by that, which probably isn’t a good place to start when one is trying to change jobs and this might be why I’ve been unsuccessful at finding something new over the the past six months that I’ve been looking. The economy might have something to do with it, too, but there are jobs to be had out there for those with the drive and energy to seek them out. As the Man keeps reminding me, looking for a job is a full-time job. Of course, I’m already working full time split between two jobs, so finding the time and energy to put into a second full-time job looking for a job has been a bit of a challenge.

I’ve recently started thinking more seriously about signing up with some temp agencies as a way to get out of my increasingly frustrating work situation and to start building resume experience that would make me more obviously suited to working in an office. I have no doubt that I can do it but I suspect that a resume filled with coffee and bookstore experience probably doesn’t inspire confidence that I know how to write a memo or successfully operate a copy machine. Of course, if they’d just hire me, they’d at least find out that I can make a damn good cup of coffee even if it’s only with a crappy office coffee maker.

As part of my birthday celebration, I’ll be jumping out of a plane tomorrow. (Don’t worry, there will be a parachute involved.) Perhaps a bit out of character for little ol’ me although the more I’ve thought about it, perhaps not. I did move to Montréal when I was 18 for university. I did move across the country to follow a dream of working in coffee when I was 25. I will jump out of a plane now that I’m 27. How much scarier can 13,000 feet be after thrusting myself into situations where I knew no one and had to rely only on myself to start a new life in a new place? If anything, it’ll be over way quicker than settling into that dorm was at McGill or finding a place to live and finding a job and making friends here in Portland.

I figure it’s probably a good thing to do something big like that to shake things up once in a while. Remember that graduation speech song from a decade ago? One of its pieces of advice was to do one thing every day that scares you. Sometimes, crossing the street is scary enough. Sometimes, you have to jump out of a plane.

I paid the extra bucks to get still photos and video of the jump and I’ll be posting them when I get them (photos on facebook probably tomorrow but the video takes a little longer).

I think having photographic documentation will help with keeping me inspired to bring the courage of skydiving into my every day life. ‘If I can jump out of a plane, surely I can…’

Moving forward into my 28th year, I have lots of plans and goals. By fall, I hope to be done with my current jobs and into something else (even if it’s only temping). I also hope to write here more often and maybe even try to revive the photo a day project (though, to be honest, I found the photo a day project to be more trouble than it was maybe worth: it felt like a chore to HAVE to take a photo every day, so maybe I’ll focus more on photo safaris rather than taking one every day). I’ve already started to get back into a groove of reading again–though that may have something to do with the perfect summer weather that Portland has had on offer as of late. I tend to watch more movies in the winter and read more in the summer.

So, happy birthday to me. And happy summer to you all. Happy Canada Day tomorrow. And Happy Fourth of July this weekend.

Waiting for some laundry to dry so I can head out to the gym and then off to Ikea with the Man to buy him a new bed.

I snapped this yesterday on my way to Tuesday night trivia (we won).

It’s a building that I’ve seen before but always from a block over and on the bus as it sped by. They don’t build ’em like this anymore, alas. There are some nice details in the stonework, for example. It also struck me as very anachronistic, with the Bug there. I bet if I messed with it a little bit in photoshop (if I had photoshop and had the know-how), it’d be a pretty convincing photo from 40 years ago.